frog

I think you answered your own question?

I hated them at first - why does everyone need to be special? I’ve gotten used to them and like knowing what AFSC’s are working an issue. They need to cut down on the dumb ones that are non-standard or indicate something other than basic AFSC.

Let me guess - Hill AFB?

Who is floating these ideas? Seriously. I haven’t seen a serious discussion of sending NATO land forces into Ukraine.

He’s actually right. Our demographics will lead to economic decline without immigration. The problem is we need immigrants who follow societal rules, bring solid skills, and pay taxes…not exactly what is happening right now. The kind of immigrant we need isn’t sneaking across the border in the middle of the night.

Sorry to hear that, and great mindset going forward. I was medically DQed before I ever got into the cockpit. I figured I would do four years as a CE officer and separate. Looking back twenty years later, the AF gave me some awesome opportunities and experiences to lead in some pretty challenging circumstances. Solid leadership is desperately needed throughout the service. One piece of advice: get to know some pilots at your next assignment, appreciate what they do, but avoid getting caught up in what could have been. I will also share that washing out a demanding program like UPT doesn’t mean you can’t fly. I owned an airplane for 15 years and put over 1,000 hours on it. Recreational flying may not be as “cool”, but there are aspects of it that are pretty damn good.

Nailed it. This really isn’t that hard. Russia is in the wrong regardless of Bashi’s affinity for “historical ties” and Putin’s dong. The only question is how much the U.S. can/should afford to invest in flipping said douche canoe over. Zero is a reasonable answer because we are spending ourselves to death, but it shouldn’t be difficult to agree that a strong and expanding Russia is not in the best interest of the U.S.

Actual journalism: https://www.wsj.com/world/tired-ukrainian-troops-fight-to-hold-back-russian-offensive-they-come-like-zombies-9b4a31a1?mod=mhp TLDR: It’s an ugly mess and will be for a long time.

Source? Not quibbling, just interested.

Putin points at military encroachment by NATO, but the reality is that the NATO force posture is a skeleton of what it was in 1991 and poses absolutely no physical threat to Russia. If Putin was really worried about NATO military power on his border, he would quit threatening his neighbors. What scares Putin is the people in former Soviet “republics” have a pretty fierce independence streak, have no problem highlighting former Soviet/Russian threats and atrocities, and want to pursue Western style democratic governance, so much so that they have run Russian supported leaders out of their countries (e.g. Yanukovych). The growing (but not complete) success of these countries poses an existential threat not to Russia, but to Putin himself as Russians might see the benefit of reform in their own country. Luckily for Putin, he has a ton of power, no conscience, and no problem offing as many people as it takes to maintain power. To the previous comments about Russia doing better on the battlefield than is being reported - this is a bogus argument. No one is winning. Ukraine knows that they can’t give up territory every five years when Russia needs to scratch an itch, and Putin can’t be seen backing down to a country that is a fraction of its size. Russia has sustained high losses and had their most competent battlefield formation, a band of mercenaries, make a run on Moscow. This is going to continue to be ugly and stalemated, and the big losers are the civilians caught in the middle. The reason people argue over issues like this so much is that they seek a good outcome. There are no good outcomes; only “least worst” outcomes. The U.S. has no authority and little ability to “end” this war without military engagement. Any U.S. negotiated settlement that cedes Ukrainian territory will not be agreed to by the Ukrainians and will be seen as 21st century Munich Agreement style appeasement. Ask the Czechs how they feel about that. The U.S. primary goals should be no engagement by/risk to U.S. personnel, a sustained cease fire, weakened Russian influence in the region/world, and Putin remaining in control of Russia (the idiot you know is better than the idiot you don’t, especially when nuclear weapons are involved.) Providing weapons to Ukraine supports these goals. The real policy question for Americans is if this is a priority among everything else; our country is slowly spending itself to death. In my mind, we are getting great value out of our Ukraine support and the only way to fix the budget is to fix entitlements, but I am not an economist and don’t pretend to be.

Dude, just stop. There is an enormous amount of space to have an intelligent discussion of pragmatic U.S. options to support Ukraine to include offering no support whatsoever. That discussion is impossible to have with someone who uses secondhand Russian propaganda to develop their worldview.

The problem circles right back to rated leadership. In 18 years as a CE officer, wing commanders have rarely asked about work happening on the airfield or major infrastructure. I am never asked about CE deployment capabilities or readiness, which is the primary purpose of uniformed engineers. I do get asked about making the grass look better on an almost weekly basis. What message does that send to your organization? One thing the Marines and Army have done is mostly civilianize their installation support activities (think CDC, fitness center, etc), which allows their support echelons to better focus on how they support the no kidding primary mission. Great idea. I feel like my PPL experience, while nothing like that of military trained pilots, provides significant context for what is important and why.

Any piece of equipment that is used for weapons handling has to be explicitly inspected and certified for nuclear support. LRS is responsible for a ton of vehicles and equipment.

I’m sure the taxpayer is thrilled.